How do you create scale and consistency in your marketing department? You probably need to start collaborating with your sales team and consider automating. This week we tackle some of the benefits and challenges of implementing marketing and sales automation.

Speaker 1:

0:00

Welcome to make the logo bigger. We're a strategy for his company, right? So as everyone should be, I mean you gotta start with your objective and then kind of work your way backwards from there. The podcast that takes you behind the scenes of a marketing agency, conscience getting so much more expensive. We just got to figure out more economical ways to provide that service to clients from two guys that get paid to do this stuff on a daily basis. People love behind the scenes type stuff. They want to see how you work. You know, they want to know more about your process. So be open and honest. Here's your host. You know rice. Usually the best ideas don't actually sit within where you are. They're usually come from somewhere else. And Mike, Carol, you need to design first and then create content to the design. And now the obligatory legal disclosure. Bill Rice and Mike Carol worked for Kalydeco. Hey, marketing design agency. All opinions expressed by bill and Mike are definitely the opinions of Kalydeco opinions expressed by guests of this podcast. Well, they could be right or wrong. Who knows? This podcast is for informational purposes and has a reasonable probability of making your marketing better. And now this week's episode.:

Speaker 1:

1:07

All right, we're an episode for getting started with marketing and sales automation. Uh, this is bill and I got my carol here with me. Hey. So today we wanted to kind of:

Speaker 2:

1:17

about as web designers and website creators and just general digital marketing, the marketing and sales automation part of the equation is something that we should always be thinking about probably sooner than later, but at the same time it can also become an enormous distraction because there's so many bells and whistles on these things. So let's get to be a main topic for today. But before we jump into that, uh, I want to continue to sort of help you get to know us a little bit better. Um, and so today, Mike, I wanted to introduce our audience to a WHO Kalydeco is, why, what, how we're set up and sort of why we got there. So I'll lead off a little bit. And then, um, since you're kind of running the show on a daily basis, now I want you to kind of tell us where, where we are today, but we actually originally started Kalydeco, or I started Kalydeco, uh, as a software company, we had a software as a service.:

Speaker 2:

2:10

We were in the crm space, um, and we were particularly focused in the mortgage industry and providing the ability for large call center mortgage companies, uh, to take an internet generated leads in the tens of thousands a day automatically and, and, and, uh, sort of intelligent way route those and help those loan officers do those sell sales and follow ups. Um, of course the industry completely crashed. We had to do a very rapid pivot and we pivoted it into a, just becoming a more traditional marketing agency because we were able to diversify our industries and channels a lot better and were able to survive and thrive and grow from there. And so now that's, that's what we are. We're a marketing agency, but uh, Mike maybe talk a little bit about, uh, the team:

Speaker 3:

3:00

and how we're constructed and the decisions that we've made over time as we kind of built in matured a really interesting journey. I think there's lessons in it by the way, for any entrepreneur. Um, so the biggest thing I kinda want to start with, like the biggest thing I've learned, I think the most important thing for any entrepreneur or anybody who's running a business is just remember that like your preconceived notion of what your business should be. It's something the faster you can divorce that from your mind and pursue what your business like, you know, should be or needs to be with the marketplace, demands your business to be a is the best way to grow your business. So when we started out, you know, the first thing when I met bill, we met six years ago, right? I guess, man, I can't believe we were transitioning from sort of like a, I don't know, I guess I'd describe us as like an Internet marketing agency, you know, kind of focused on doing content and some influencer stuff.:

Speaker 3:

3:54

And, and whatever else. So it's kind of interesting what you were doing by the way. I remember find influences like one of the early pieces of software we built to, to identify twitter audiences and all that kind of stuff. But to transition that into a full service digital agency that folks a little bit more on creative. That was, that was my first preconceived notion when I got here was that hey, you know, an agency needs creative work. So we built a video department, you know, I use the word department loosely. We brought in some top notch graphic design and that, that worked well for us for a little while. We started doing more infographic work, more video work a more what I would call luxury content work now, but we ran into a lot is that, you know, people weren't willing to invest in that kind of work, at least not the type of clients that we were attracting.:

Speaker 3:

4:33

So after that we realized, you know, the most important part about what we did was actually generating leads. Um, and that there weren't a lot of agents out there that were sort of measuring themselves against that metric, right? I mean, you know, I'll tell you right now, if you're working with an agency and they're talking to you about advertising, impressions, fire them immediately because the impressions are getting don't matter. Uh, you know, and you're not Coca Cola, right? So like it's not, you're not yet pulling in brand market share, anything like that. So, um, and, and so when we focused on lead generation, when we really started to pay attention to is that all of the websites that we were dealing with were inadequate to execute a true lead generation strategy where they didn't have the right forms in the right place or they weren't connected by the way to a crm in the right way or any type of email marketing automation or those types of things.:

Speaker 3:

5:22

And so then we built a development department inside of Kalydeco to help us execute the campaigns we wanted to run. Um, and so that was kind of, I guess, evolution number three. And then we're sort of an evolution. Number four is, and what we found out is that a, a Kalydeco is really good at building websites be we think about building websites much differently than your most web design and development shops. And the reason for that is because we come out of this software space, I think, and it's also because we come out of a lead generation space where we think about the website is more of a tool than a brochure, which is what most, you know, website design and development agencies themselves kind focus on, right is like this static thing that doesn't have to execute anything or anything like that. Um, and, and, and what we realized is that agencies like ourselves, we're actually looking for that development support.:

Speaker 3:

6:08

So now we've done a sort of a different transition into being an agency agency where we're providing, you know, not even white labeled but partnership development services for sort of boutique brand shops and design shops that need development and technical expertise. And when I say technical expertise that I don't mean it just like the coding. Um, we're talking about marketing and sales automation today and our expertise is a lead generation provider and uh, and as a software company is again is like changing how we help our partner agencies think about what their websites or what the, you know, what their marketing approach to the digital space can actually do for their clients. And so it, it's um, it's an interesting partnership and I think our partners are pretty happy these days.:

Speaker 2:

6:54

Yeah, totally. Totally. Alright, well cool. Let's, uh, so you talked a little bit about marketing and sales automation. That's kind of our topic for today. So dive into what all that means and how that relates to websites and how people should be thinking about their, their online.:

Speaker 3:

7:11

I think this is going to be a topic that we're going to revisit because it is a, is a giant topic. So what we're going to talk, well, what God I want to cover today is just like how to get started or even where to start. So the most important thing that you need to facilitate any type of automation, right? Whether it's a automated emails or you know, we can get down into like, you know, ringless voicemail drops or lead routing or any of that kind of stuff is a database. And when I say database, I mean a customer relationship management system of some kind. So you need to collect records, you need to collect information and data and it needs to live somewhere so that you can leverage that information to automate behaviors or automate marketing campaigns or whatever else. So there are a lot of different crms out there.:

Speaker 3:

7:52

Uh, and, and this is where I'll say engaging an agency that understands marketing and sales automation or a web design and development shop that like, thinks about automation as the part or a component of your strategic web design or redesign is super critical, right? Because if you build your website the wrong way and it's not equipped to hook into different types of software and then you're going to be back, you know, back to square one when you finally decide that, oh, I want to automate some of these sales processes or marketing campaigns or whatever else. So, um, so you got to start thinking about it at the beginning and the most important part is to make a list of like things you want your database to do, so think about your sales and marketing processes and really just make a nice clean list of features or things you'd want to crm to do.:

Speaker 3:

8:39

And then you guys start comparing and contrasting and don't do so hastily I guess. So if you've got to start with a crm, take your time. If that process takes, you know, 30 days, great. If it takes 90 days, that's fine. You want to start with a piece of software that your team is going to adopt. Adoptability is like the most critical part with any type of crm. And Bill's been in the crm space for a long time. I mean, you know, do you have any pieces of advice for people that are trying to choose a crm because that's where this all starts. Right?:

Speaker 2:

9:12

Right, right. Yeah. I mean I think there's, there's two kinds of really critical places to start. When you're thinking about this is one, what's the customer experience that either you're trying to deliver or probably more important that your customer expects to be delivered? So do they expect an immediate response? Do they expect 24 slash seven response? Do they expect a sort of a working hours type of response? Do they expect that response to be, um, you know, the satisfaction of a transaction, um, or are they actually expecting someone or a salesperson to reach out to them? Or maybe they just want to, you know, again, we talked about this last episode. Maybe they want to do some self service stuff. Maybe they actually want to do a fair amount of the work before that process of really engaging with your company. So the first thing is just really understanding what the customer expects and what you're trying to deliver as far as that experience.:

Speaker 2:

10:07

Uh, and then I think the second thing is then you have to look at, especially if you're, if your particular product or service requires a sales force or a sales interaction on that lead is what does that look like? What is your sales team look like? What are they comfortable with, what are their skills, what are the types of interactions that they're used to having? Um, and this is a huge one. What is their technical capacity or capability? Um, I see a lot of times where people will find just an incredible crm, all kinds of bells and whistles and everything, but their salesforce themselves, um, are kind of old school, um, or have some, some technical deficiencies as far as their capacity to use something. And I'm not even. I think everybody's immediate assumption is well, it would just look at the age of our salesforce and if they're older than they can't do it and if they're younger they can do it.:

Speaker 2:

11:02

I'm actually, I'm finding it's a little bit of a flip and this is kind of an interesting. Uh, and again, we don't want to tend to drift into this, but it's an interesting thing when you get into this millennial generation, whatever. Right? Sorry to interrupt you, but I know I had this exact experience this past week's tell your story that I just want to add like a little anecdote to it because you were. Yeah, I was just saying they weren't, they weren't a part of the early kind of figure it out technology when technology was kind of raw and you got to figure a lot of things out and most of the times things didn't work so you had to figure out how to work around and stuff like this in the millennial era. Um, and, and no, no dog or a or any sort of disparagement on their part. But we've gotten so good. Apple got a so good that just crap. This works. Right. And so they haven't had to Kinda work through any sort of software is still, I'm not always perfect. So yeah, it's,:

Speaker 3:

11:52

I never assume this to be this way, but we just implemented. Um, so, uh, you know, a company came to us, one of our clients, uh, they're actually outdoor, you know, out of home advertising space, um, came to us to reset their whole tech stack right there, working on nothing but I'm spreadsheets and whatever else. And so we went through a whole process to map out their sales processes just like you were talking about, Bill, map out their marketing process, how their customers expect to be engaged and so on and so forth, and then pick a crm that we recommended based on those features or those requirements, I guess, and then implement that crm and then set up the automation inside of it. The crm we chose for them, by the way, just in case anybody's interested as insightly is one of the best crm and our work with a, particularly from a contextual data perspective, but that there's a reason for that for this particular client, which I'll get to in a second.:

Speaker 3:

12:36

However, on the team watching them adopt this software, right. I always assumed that the, you know, that there's a nice cross section of ages on the, on the team, and the actually the older members of the team, um, are way more into learning the software, 100 percent, uh, they, they see how it's going to make their day easier. They understand the pain of meetings to learn a new system and some of the younger members of the team are the most frustrated with it. And it really surprised me. I thought it would be the exact opposite and it just speaks to exactly what you're talking about, which is any crm or any type of software that you want your team to use when it comes to marketing and sales automation is all about usability and adaptiveness, but it's also about your team's willingness to commit to learning something new.:

Speaker 3:

13:23

Um, you know, we have a, we have a saying at Kalydeco by the way, we use base camp for all of our project management, which is both adequate, inadequate. At the same time. We really love the software, by the way. Nothing. It's a software. But, uh, you know, we're thinking about how we work however everybody base camps, that's our rule. And so if you're going to implement a crm or marketing automation in your company, then everyone's got to do it or it's not gonna work at all, I suppose as the is one of the things to kind of remember the commitment for sure. Anyway, so let's get back to like, so, so you want to start out with marketing and sales automation. So there's a couple of the things that you should kind of think about. Uh, one of the examples that bill gave, which is really great, is to think about how your sales team works, how your marketing team works and, and the experience of your customer in both those situations and how you interact with our customers regularly, uh, to pick which crm you're working on.:

Speaker 3:

14:11

I want to give kind of two examples real quick. If you are a sales team, for example, like one of our clients, um, that relies heavily on outbound phone calls. You need a crm that makes facilitating that phone call really easy. So we poked around for a long time and this was in the, in the financial services space, a mortgage specifically, uh, there's a lot of phone calling going on. We looked around for a long time. All of the crm made it really difficult to like make a telephone call and build, can speak to this. Uh, it's, it was super challenging and annoying for a loan officer to have to find a phone number, dial it in a different place. It was just nuts. And so instead of doing something like that, we weren't close.io for that particular client. And it's a really lightweight crm that focuses really on phone call and record.:

Speaker 3:

14:55

Your phone calls are really clean list of like who you have to call next and when, um, and so that's one example. So if you're, you know, your sales team relies on the phone, then you need a slightly different crm for that. Now we have another client that if you're sales team or your actually your marketing sort of presence, realize let's say more on email, um, where your customers are in a learning situation or you know, at any situation where they don't want to talk to you on the phone or the idea is for them to, to drive revenue through a digital conversation that I might recommend something like active campaign active campaign crm from a perspective of like engaging with individual customers on a regular basis in a personal way is really frustrating experience. In fact, their crm, you know, forgive me people active campaign, it's really crappy. It's terrible. Um, but what is awesome about the platform is how they leveraged the crm or the database to drive a email marketing automation. Automated lifecycle is allowing you to create conditions, web hooks on your website to trigger different types of campaigns. And it's very easy to use from the marketer's perspective. So it's really critical that before you set out to choose the crm, you want to, you know, do you want to leverage that? You understand the features, it needs to make sure that it fits within your team's workflow so that, that's super important.:

Speaker 2:

16:13

Yeah, totally. I mean, each one is whatever that sales process is going to be email based. Is it going to be heavily relying on text messages, voicemail drops, outbound phone calls. It makes all the difference in what you select.:

Speaker 3:

16:27

Yeah. The biggest myth in the crm world, and you'll see this on all their websites, is that we can fit to fit any workflow. One hundred percent, not true. Um, they, they all, they, every crm was, you know, was inspired by somebody else's sales process as a good way to think about it. So it's like, it's trying to like put on your brother's clothes. It might fit, but they're not going to fit quite right. So like you got to figure out, you got to find a lookalike and then a doppelganger for yourself and the software context and then, you know, it doesn't have to retrofit itself too much. Um, the other thing to remember by the way is to start out really simple. So when it comes to marketing and sales automation and data and all that kind of stuff, it's really easy to get buried in the weeds.:

Speaker 3:

17:10

Oh, I want to automate all these processes, you know, I, I wanna, I want to automate the trigger to tell my sales team to follow up at this time and I want to automate this email, I want to do that, wiped the slate clean, and think about the one single most important pain point that is causing you like the most, like the time crunch and automate one thing so you find your biggest pain point, whatever that particular thing is, and then you figure out how to automate that one thing. Once you get that down and that automation is working and you can actually see it being productive, that process is going to inform you on what needs to be automated next. So you really got to start granular and just try to solve one problem at a time with your, your sort of marketing and sales, a footprint or approach to that.:

Speaker 3:

17:53

The other thing, the other thing I think you have to remember by the way, is don't expect that people are going to remember anything so, so, so when you're talking about marketing and sales automation, the frequency of the campaigns you should run are probably higher than you are comfortable with. Um, and so when I say people aren't gonna, remember anything that goes for your actual internal teams. So how many times you might want to automate reminders or tasks or those types of things from a sales automation perspective or a workflow automation perspective. And it also goes the same for your audience. You know, it, it, I'm not telling you to email your audience every day or to do that. I mean, that might be necessary, but you gotta you gotta play with the frequency. But the assumption is just like when you're doing public speaking, they tell you to what you know, to talk so slow that you feel like you sound stupid to yourself, but to the audience, you're right on time. And it's the same thing with marketing and sales automation. If you think you're doing it a little too much. Oh, sorry, go ahead bill.:

Speaker 2:

18:46

No, no, I was just going to totally reinforce that. I mean to your point at the point in time where you think you're maybe just being a tiny bit annoying is probably just about the right frequency to actually get people to resonate. I can't tell you the number of times that, that we've talked to customers that have, you know, we've been talking to for a long time and it's like, oh well I just, you know, just realize that you were actually reaching out to me or it just hit me at the right time where it's actually come back as a priority. So yeah, you could never, rarely will you overdo it.:

Speaker 3:

19:22

Yeah, I totally agree. And you know, and even if you are over doing it and you'll hear me talk about this all the time are both in the stock ones all the time. Again, you know, things that happen in the digital space are really like a, they've got a really short half life. So you know, it was a bad experience. Someone's probably not going to remember as long as you're not truly insulting them or something. Some things that I want to say about marketing automation because again, this is a huge topic, so I would encourage everyone to either go to [inaudible] dot com or leave your questions in the comments here or, you know, try to get in touch with us if you have specific questions and I'll do my best to answer them. Uh, I love setting up marketing and sales automation platforms are two things.:

Speaker 3:

19:58

One, if you invest in automation, it will pay you back tenfold. So like the most important part of business to me is expanding the lifetime value of your customer and one of the greatest ways to do that is to automate not only the lead to close process but also the followup process with actual individual customers. So if you're thinking about building a marketing and sales automation sort of footprint for yourself, I would highly recommend that you've looked to spend more than you are probably willing to spend in the first place. I don't mean on the software, but I mean I'm finding an expert to help set it up for you. It does require development resources, right? So if you don't have a technical savvy team or an in house development department, you're gonna have to find a partner to do that. Whether it's going on to upwork and finding an independent developer or finding an agency that's going to be able to help you set everything up and connect all the software and you know, Hook it into your website so, so the actual automation part is automated for you and not just the customer.:

Speaker 3:

20:51

Go ahead and invest in it because I guarantee you it's going to pay you back. The second recommendation is to be flexible and when, I mean be flexible as you don't need just one piece of software. So when I talk about earlier, finding one pain point in solving that if you're looking at marketing and sales automation tools outside of the crm, by the way like email automation and those types of things do not look for one piece of software that does everything solve one problem at a time. And the only criteria for you to look at when you're picking pieces of software and the marketing and sales automation space is their ability to integrate with other pieces of software. So if you'd go to a website, by the way and you're looking at a piece of software and there's not a very clear integrations tab in the navigation go elsewhere.:

Speaker 3:

21:37

There's no reason why you shouldn't feel to find a piece of software that will literally almost integrate with any other pieces of software you want from your accounting software to data software to marketing automation, email automation to sales automation. You want to find little pieces of software that do one thing really well, and then you want to find the next thing that you need and build what we call a tech stack. So, so be flexible and find an expert. Don't, don't try to do it yourself. If you know if you don't have the technical capability to do so, because what'll end up happening is you'll try out a piece of software. It won't get adopted. It's not going to work the right way. There'll be no strategy behind it. And then you're gonna be right back into the spreadsheet you were working from before with no processes automated annually, you know, and no, no gain on the revenue side. Right?:

Speaker 2:

22:19

Right. And I want to, as we kind of close out this topic a little bit, I just want to reiterate one of the points that you made because this is why this particular concept is so important to what you're doing in your, in your marketing stack overall. And that's the lifetime value of a customer. So often when we're, we're, we're building campaigns, especially marketing campaigns on the web. Uh, we're just, we're driving in visitors, we're trying to get them engaged and if they don't, we just literally throw them on the floor, um, and this actually wastes a ton of your money and delivers just horrendous customer experience. And so really thinking through, I'm trying to create a, a customer for a lifetime, uh, is immensely valuable for you and creates a much better experience for those prospects and those visitors that engage with your company. And I, I pull out, this is an Oldie but goodie and most people on this podcast listening probably will not remember this book, but one of Seth Godin, earliest books, it was permission marketing and he was talking about email marketing when it was very early stage of email marketing, wasn't really a thing.:

Speaker 2:

23:32

He was talking about gaining permission from these, these folks to basically engage them with marketing. And so that was the context of the book. But there was one particular statement that he made in there that I will never forget and has always been a part of my marketing psyche. And he said it's always easy, easier to find products for customers than it is to find customers for a product. Uh, so this concept of building up this massive database of loyal customers where you've served them a and even if you weren't able to sell them something initially, a, you gave them a good experience and you built some trust in you. And then you go about finding the products that they need over time or over a lifetime as they're engaging with you, is such a better place to put your business. Then every time you come up with a new product or a new service or you have to pivot that you actually ended up having to go out there and find new customers.:

Speaker 2:

24:27

And one of the guys on this podcast that has done this a amazingly is I'm Chris Brogan. And so this is a guy who's built out enormous loyal audience, um, and he has literally pivoted, change a manipulated and transformed his, his business over the years and all kinds of different ways, but the same like core dynamic, trusting, loving audience has always been around him and he continues to, to obviously do well with that. So, um, so hopefully as we start to introduce some castings and stuff, um, we can start to talk to people who have done this because I think this is an enormous Lee valuable skill and, and technology, uh, in concept to bring into your business. So, uh, any last parting words there?:

Speaker 3:

25:17

No. I mean, I had to kind of expand on that just a little bit for like one minute because I think it's such an awesome way to think about your digital presence, you know, so many. So many of our clients are, you know, and it's good for the, they're focused on their, like their core products or whatever else, but the data and the customers that you engage is a value in and of itself, which is exactly what you're saying, right? Which there's so many different ways to monetize web traffic that you might be sitting on a, you know, if you think in that manner. The manner that bill just kind of described it, seth started so long ago is you can be sitting on a goldmine right now and you don't even know it and it's related to your business. Um, you know, I think of one client of ours that when we first engaged with them, they had over 20 to 30,000 emails and they weren't even talking to these people in the business was about ready to go out of business.:

Speaker 3:

26:07

Right, right, right. And then, you know, and then they brought bill on and, and just by a simple email list and understanding who these people were and kind of what their intent was and talking to them on a regular basis, you know, literally turned a failing business into a cash machine. Um, you know, I don't want to say overnight it took a lot of work, but you know, but it was, yeah, it's incredible. So you may be sitting on something so valuable that you don't even know it. If you just start thinking about your website visitors, your traffic and your lists in as a loyal audience as opposed to people that are just buying one thing, you know, they trust you already because they're engaging with you. So if they trust you,:

Speaker 1:

26:44

then you can kind of push them in almost any direction that you would want. Right? For sure. You're listening to collide. It goes. Make the logo bigger podcast. You can find us on the web at [inaudible] dot com. K A l a D, a c.com. Now, back to the show. Okay. So let's jump out of that and talk about biggest challenges, rabbit holes of the week. Um, so I'll lead here. So this is something that I'm thinking about a lot and I don't, I don't know if it's the right way to think about it:

Speaker 2:

27:18

or it's the right decision, but it's really thinking about focusing more of my attention, particularly in the content area on a sort of bigger and larger projects or content types. So things like blog posts, books, videos, podcasts versus an enormous amount of time, uh, in sort of phonetic energy around micro content like facebook, twitter, snapchat, and instagram. So I think for the last several years, there's been lots of focus on that micro content, uh, the value it is, the attention that it grabs, the engagement it creates, um, and obviously the intention that it drives, but I'm starting to wonder if you get, again, maybe towards our audience creation side. You get a higher value audience and you get a more quality loyal connection, uh, by focusing on some of those sort of larger content pieces that go a little bit deeper. Um, and maybe take a little bit more time to incrementally produce. So that's kind of what's a finished making we think.:

Speaker 3:

28:33

Yeah, it's an interesting, like it's a balance, right? It has to be a balance. I mean we always preach, you know, you and I together at Kalydeco that even if you're producing micro content, the best way to produce micro content, whether it's facebook, twitter, like I haven't count blog posts technically as micro content because you can bang out a 500 word blog posts. I mean, you know, in a, in an hour or two hours or something like that. I mean if you, if you have writers or, or you know, a reasonable prolific writer yourself but, but always using that micro content to build towards a bigger piece of content. So you're kind of killing two birds with one stone. I mean, you can't always do that. Um, but, uh, you know, the way that the social channels or at least facebook in particular, right, which is the most active of the social channels is clamping down on organic content from, from, you know, private companies or brands or anything else.:

Speaker 3:

29:21

Uh, you know, is leaning more towards you want to spend more time on a larger asset because you're going to have to pay to get an audience anyway. I mean the theory bind micro content, was that like, Oh, if I put enough out of there by generate enough activity, eventually I'm going to acquire an audience that is just used to hearing from me all the time, whether I'm clever or quip or you know, or whatever. But I think the new landscape today, bar, just like you said, it's about value and value usually does not come in and you know, 144 characters. Just ask them, ask the president. Totally. So you know, if you've got the time, you know, I would focus on always providing value. Now if you're really funny and you're a comedian, right, well then maybe your value is twitter because like I just want to read your job just fine. So if you think about who your audience is and what they value, that you should create the content that matches that value provided:

Speaker 2:

30:09

personality too. We talked about this in content creation all the time. It's like, what, what is your most comfortable, um, either frequency tempo or even just, um, media. I'm the type of media that you're most comfortable with, so if it's, if you're, you know, you're good at twitter and the quick little one liners or whatever, definitely lean into that. But uh, if you're a more thoughtful or you gotta, you gotta kind of think through concepts or you're not quick enough on your feet or you're just not completely like always attached to your phone, then a twitter might not be the right format.:

Speaker 3:

30:42

Right. Because it has to be super timely, you know? Yeah. It's, it's a good question though, because the nature of Seo changes constantly, you know, the nature of people have consumed content constantly. I mean, it, it's, it's almost a question that never needs to be fully answered and you just need to be kind of responding. I think a behavioral trends on the web, you know, which sounds like a really like jerky way to say, I don't know.:

Speaker 2:

31:07

Totally. So how about you? What are you thinking about?:

Speaker 3:

31:11

I am thinking this week in the spirit of our starting off with marketing automation that so often I deal with clients that think that automation, self marketing and sales automation, supplants there need to work. This is not, this is not the case. I think the biggest misnomer when you talk about automation, workflow automation from a productivity perspective is really what you're talking about. If you're talking about making your team's time more valuable marketing and sales automation does a little bit of that as well, but it creates a different kind of work and it's a good kind of work. Trying to keep your data clean and all that kind of stuff and so often we run into clients and people that think that, oh well, you know, once I turned that automated email lifecycle and I never have to touch it again. Well No, not now. You've got to look at the data and you got to see which emails and subject lines people are engaging with the most.:

Speaker 3:

32:00

I mean it just creates a different kind of work. What did it makes more efficient? By the way, is your ability to make money? I mean, that's what you're, you're making more efficient, your ability to talk to people in a more personalized way, your ability to capitalize on, you know, moments in time, so to speak with your customers. Um, but it's not going to like eliminate the need for your sales team to work or eliminate the need for your marketing team to, you know, to work. It's just going to create a different kind of work is an important part.:

Speaker 2:

32:28

Still haven't seen the, the legitimate work wash, sleep, uh, sorta or make money while I sleep. Just.:

Speaker 3:

32:35

No, not unless you're, what's his name? Uh, you always impresses me, by the way, from affiliate marketing. What does that. Neil Patel, Neil Patel definitely makes money while he sleeps on a single, literally a single blog post I love everyone should go check out and you'll have to tell the smart passive income dot Com. And it's a pretty neat site. One of the things that he does is he's like 100 percent transparent. This is his business now on how he makes his money through affiliate marketing. And if you dive into his P and l a, you'll see that literally it's one link, uh, in like, uh, several blog posts or even one blog post just advising people and what type of web hosting.:

Speaker 2:

33:10

So Neil Patel's is one of these, but your, your, um, what is it? Pat Flynn? Smart passive income. Yeah. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Uh, which is neat because there's a couple of those folks that are exposing their, kind of their p and l on how this works, but I still think he's doing.:

Speaker 3:

33:29

Oh yeah. Well he's, well, you know, once he's built himself an audience of millions, I mean literally those back to the audience, right. That's what the DNA of the. Yeah, 100 percent. Yeah. And he's found different ways to, I think to, you know, to your point at the beginning of this discussion about audience and its value is he's focused on building that audience first and then figured out how to monetize it.:

Speaker 2:

33:49

Actually I use some of his podcasting tips to kind of get us going here too. So he's super smart dude. That's kicking out a lot of content and doing a lot of work at least on that front. What were those tips? Just how to set a, you know, how to set up the type of equipment to start using m and a, the type of, you know, how to do distribution and that kind of stuff. So there's actually a lot of moving parts here. I'm definitely gotten easier over the years to do and actually manage a podcast, especially if you're talking about having multiple personalities interacting or, or whatnot. But um, but there's still, there's still a fair number of moving pieces to kind of go from having a conversation to get into deployed so that you as the listener actually come across it and can easily listen, subscribe, and engage over time with us as a, it's, it's a, there's still some work there.:

Speaker 2:

34:42

So Rebecca, the back of the idea that you. Nothing's going to stop you. Right? Exactly. Exactly. I still hottest trends in the market. I'm also one of the ones that I, I've become a little fascinated with and of course we've tested and found some, some new stuff out here. So facebook made a pretty public announcement that they were a, and this comes out of what Mike was talking about before, all the scandals around the power of the influence during the election of things like facebook and the stream and, and, uh, maybe nefarious actors in trying to influence you on who to vote for and that sort of thing. So facebook made this public announcement that they were going to shift some of the weighting and emphasis in their streams, uh, to, to more heavily favor friends and family in their content versus maybe those that are marketing to you or those that are, um, organizations and those sorts of, which is kind of interesting because as a shareholder, I'm, that would make me a little concerned because obviously marketing revenue, advertising revenue is a core piece of how they make money for the shareholders.:

Speaker 2:

35:50

So that's a pretty bold announcement to make. Um, but, uh, the result of that, that we've already seen a little bit is it's shifting and this is always the case, especially for digital digital marketers, is we have to figure out what's going on and then we have to adjust. And one of the things we've had to adjust is, so the paid advertising is getting more expensive. It's getting harder to make it work well in that sort of thing, although it's still super powerful and targeted and that kind of stuff. But we did some testing where we tried to leverage that waiting and do some organic stuff. And one of the things that we leveraged and I think it's going to become increasingly powerful is our access to private groups to actually put our promotional, uh, although it was sort of organic and it felt natural, but to put some of those promotional type things into these private groups which are already these close communities that are full of trust and full of a lot of people. Um, and so we used one of these is as a group of about $60,000 and we were promoting an event and got some really, really good performance out of that because we put it as a trusted entity into a trusted group. Um, and there were 60,000 people, kind of like an email list or 60,000 captured individuals there that were able to react to that product, uh, that event and it worked really well and it didn't cost us a dime. So, um,:

Speaker 3:

37:18

you know, what's interesting about that bill is a. I totally agree by the way. It's almost, it's funny, everything moves in cycles, right? So like the, when we started doing this together, you know, it was all about influencers and creating social audience. And actually at the beginning there was ways to automate it. No, no follow unfollow programs that we built for twitter. Like I remember the days we used to able to build you a 10,000 person, legit. I mean, there'd be some bots in there or whatever, but twitter audience just in the unfollow follow sort of a software inside of days, weeks like insta audits, um, and now it's come all the way back around to where you still engaging people in this manner, but now it's in a much more organic way. I mean, you have to be a personality, you've got to be a real person.:

Speaker 3:

38:00

You've got to find the groups to, you know, to, to engage with. And what I've noticed on facebook, this is anecdotal. I don't have data to back this up, but just from my own experience is that the more that people, and you engage inside of a group as a member of it, the more it shows up in your newsfeed. Um, so, you know, I'm a part of a, a Kubota tractors group, uh, which I love by the way that the nicest gentlemen ever on earth. So when I'm stuck on my tractor and I can't, I don't know what to do next, I can literally post a question. I get 10 answers inside of five minutes. Um, but the level of engagement these people have, these, these groups, it's kind of affinity groups is just incredible. And from a marketing perspective, if you're transparent, honest and provide value can be, is really a growth hack to be honest, if you can really drive for growth for sure.:

Speaker 3:

38:46

So what are you looking at to. It looks like maybe some facebook stuff as well. Yeah. So I mean real quick then there's, you know, some of the trends that are happening now. More and more companies are doing live events. Um, and so I'm going to give you a, a lot of events are really cool. Uh, I've actually noticed that I'm enjoying them more in my facebook feed. Again, anecdotal, but you know, I've got a friend who's got a radio show that goes live every night. That's when Bradley, by the way on the radio and um, and so he's, he's gotten into the habit of broadcasting his radio show live on facebook so you can actually see him. Uh, it's actually really funny to watch him kind of like obviously Howard stern or anything like that react to the guests. The hats on the phone and it's kind of hilarious.:

Speaker 3:

39:24

Uh, see if you can tell what he's frustrated, you can tell when he's like baffled. Um, but anyway, so companies are using live events. Uh, you know, more, you know, more to their advantage. The one caution I would give to you, if you want to do a live event really easy, you only need your phone plan out your live event. Don't just, don't just go live on facebook and expect people to find it. Interesting. If there's dead time or dead air or whatever else, we're gonna do more damage than you're going to do help. So if you are going to do a facebook live event orchestrated like you would any type of concert or show, think about it like that. It's a show. It's just a live show like Saturday night live. So, so be careful, but, but we didn't want to do that for ours.:

Speaker 3:

40:04

Go lie while we're doing a podcast. Oh, we totally could. I, I don't know if people want to see me in my, you know, my sweatshirt or whatever else. But yeah, experiment. Tell us, tell us if you want to do that, leave it, leave a comment. Do you want, do you want us to go live while we're doing the podcasts? You see what we look like and how we do it, what our setup is. Actually, I think that's one of the intriguing things about more and video and live events and stuff like that. I think people are really intrigued with how you work and your workspace and what's around you and how you set it up and um, yeah. Anyway, so I mean there's all kinds of like, I mean this whole instagram channels that are all about, you know, workspace workspace set up and you know, what your desk looks like and stuff like that. So, um, so I think that's, I think as we increasingly are like, I mean a lot of people still work in offices, but as we kind of get this despair, there's a lot of work from home and stuff like that. I think people kind of quest for some of those, uh, those anchor points to see what other people doing this and how about how do they work? So anyway, that's a different, different topic. Different, a different. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Top recommendations.:

Speaker 3:

41:13

So mine that, you know, my recommendation for this week is to have a hobby goal. I know that sounds kind of bizarre, right? So it's really important, particularly if you're a marketer by the way, because look, I'll be honest, if you're a soulful person, a in any way, shape or form, there are days when you're going to wake up to do marketing or whoever you're marketing for. If you're running your own business, it's a different, right? Because you are passionate as an entrepreneur. You believe in what you're doing, you believe in the value providing. But if you're just a marketer out there working for a company that I'm sure you enjoy and you enjoy your, your workplace and hopefully your colleagues and all that kind of stuff, it can get a little rope from time to time and also, you know, pushing products and that type of thing.:

Speaker 3:

41:50

You know, you're not changing the world necessarily. So, um, it's really important for you to find a hobby that is as far away from what you do on a daily basis as possible so that you can bring yourself out of, you know, the day to day doldrums of the digital world and I would highly advise you to connect yourself to something physical and then to set a goal and to meet that goal, you will find yourself being more productive, not only for your hobby, so to speak, but also in your, you know, your regular work life because the balance that creates a, we'll give you the time to think about your work life in a different way. We've talked about this before, Bill's talked about this before, um, and it also gives you a respite from the digital world. So I don't know what you, you know, whatever your thing is, uh, you know, build something, make something, know, go somewhere, make a hobby, whether it's biking or whatever else. I just it to the extreme and barn farm, the end. So it's super different. We can talk about that more on future podcasts, but like it has been amazing for me personally to have these kind of two different worlds that I live in, one that is connected entirely to like the rhythms of nature and the seasons and I care whether or not it's raining all of a sudden.:

Speaker 3:

43:04

Also things like that. And then, and then I've got my digital life which is different so that that's my recommendation for the week, which is to find something outside of your job that's in the physical world:

Speaker 2:

43:14

that reminds me I need to get back to flying. So it's a perfect example of that.:

Speaker 3:

43:19

Yes, you do.:

Speaker 2:

43:23

That's got to be like a spring and summer goal to get the kind of that role. And again, I'm, my mind's kind of similar to that travel. I mean, this is something that I've always just loved and enjoyed a few years back. I actually took a whole month and lived and operated in Rome, um, which was kind of a neat experience. And in our particular business it makes that possible. We actually had another guy, he's a single guy and he lives in one place and is thinking about other places that live. I'm like, why don't you just go, just be a digital nomad and go to. And I sent him like links and stuff to these digital nomads that live in kind of a community in Bali. I was like, why wouldn't you do that? So I think traveling is huge. Uh, we're getting ready to travel again this summer, uh, and go through Italy and Greece and up in Montenegro and all these kind of cool places. So I think that's. Yeah. But it's um, well you just got to do that. It changes your perspective. It sinks you up with the rest of the world. But I'm super, super cool. It's just investing their experiences is a whole nother topic. But investing in experiences versus stuff, uh, is a, is a huge thing as well. So:

Speaker 3:

44:44

I remember I read this article not too long ago about the best type of present you can give somebody the kids and it was to give them an experience. So like, don't buy them another toy or something like that, like take them to the zoo or you know, and I couldn't, I couldn't agree more that the life changing experience for me was being able to travel through Europe in the study there and there's no substitute for divorcing yourself from the cultural experience you have every day and immersing yourself in a new one. It'll change who you are as a person that totally agree that I wish I could come with you by the way, to hold hold for a little bit seeing it out there, but it's Kinda the same equivalent experience. All right, well let's wrap up with this:

Speaker 2:

45:26

and um, we'll uh, see you guys on episode five again, keep leaving comments, recommendations, review us. All those reviews help us move up so the more people can, um, can encounter us and hopefully it gets value from a what we're pumping out here. So until then, we'll, uh, we'll say goodbye.: